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Ylri doesn’t recognize him at first.
The name does it. The way the spacer says it low, like a curse and a prayer tangled together.
Kestis.
Jedi terrorist. Wanted on half a dozen systems. Survived encounters with Inquisitors. Responsible for destruction of Imperial property, loss of life, sabotage of facilities—
Ylri’s glass stills halfway to her mouth.
All she can see is a too-small kid with his sleeves tugged down over scarred wrists, eyes always tracking exits, hands that shook after long shifts even when he pretended they didn’t.
Cal.
She leaves before the spacer finishes talking.
—
They find each other two nights later in a place that smells like old oil and sweet rot, the kind of forgotten port where nobody looks too closely unless you give them reason. Ylri sits with her back to the wall, hood up, senses stretched thin in the way she never lets herself acknowledge.
When the door opens, she knows.
He’s taller. Broader in the shoulders. The nervous stillness has calcified into something sharper, more dangerous. There’s a lightsaber on his belt—badly hidden, like he half-wants someone to notice.
But when his eyes meet hers, he freezes exactly the same way.
“Ylri?” he says, like he’s afraid the name might shatter.
She’s on her feet before she thinks better of it, crossing the space and grabbing his shoulders hard enough to feel bone.
“You’re alive,” she says stupidly.
He laughs, short and incredulous. “Yeah. I—yeah.”
They stand there a moment too long, then both pull back like they’ve burned themselves.
She doesn’t ask about the bounty. Or the lightsaber. Or the stormtroopers that pass too close outside.
She just says, “You need somewhere to disappear?”
Cal’s mouth tightens. He nods once.
“Then come on,” Ylri says. “I’ve got a room. It’s not much.”
He looks at her like she’s offered him the stars.
—
He sleeps for fourteen hours straight.
Ylri sits on the floor and keeps watch, the way Prauf used to. She watches the rise and fall of his chest, the faint twitch in his fingers that never quite went away. The little droid that seems to prefer to live on Cal's shoulder in all the released footage of his exploits she's seen cross the holonet watches her for the first several hours, then seems to decide she's trustworthy enough and take advantage of the shoddy construction of her kitchen to find someplace to rig itself a charging station.
The next day, over bitter tea and something pretending to be bread, she asks the questions they never did.
“How did you end up on Bracca?”
Cal stares into his cup for a long time. When he speaks, his voice is steady in the way of someone who’s practiced being calm.
“My Master got me out,” he says. “When the purge happened. The clones turned. He… died buying me time.”
Ylri closes her eyes. Genocide, then. Of course.
“I walked,” Cal continues. “For days. Weeks. I don’t remember. I just kept moving until the desert stopped and there were ships.”
“Why stay in the scrapyard? Or on Bracca at all?”
A shrug. “I thought no one would look for a Jedi in a graveyard.”
That tracks. Maker, it tracks too well.
“And the troopers?” she asks gently. “You used to—freeze.”
Cal’s jaw tightens. “They were clones, for the first few years. Same armor. Same voices.” He exhales. “I knew they weren’t my clones. But my body didn’t.”
Ylri nods. No judgement. Just understanding settling into place.
It all makes sense now. The hypervigilance. The way he flinched at authority, at orders, at raised voices. Any kid who’d survived what he had would be quiet and sharp-edged and afraid.
There’s only one thing left.
“The episodes,” she says carefully. “On Bracca. We thought—seizures.”
Cal winces. Not at the word. At the memory.
“Sort of,” he says. “I can see how they looked like that.”
He takes a breath, like he’s choosing honesty on purpose.
“It's a Force thing. I can see memories,” he says. “Feel them. From places. From objects. It’s called psychometry.”
Ylri doesn’t interrupt.
“On Bracca, everything was loud with it,” Cal continues. “So much death. So much history. And after the Purge… my connection to the Force was broken. Fractured. I couldn’t control it.”
He looks up at her, eyes bare. “Sometimes I’d touch something and it would pull me under. I wasn’t having seizures. I was drowning.”
Something in Ylri’s chest aches open.
“We didn’t know how to help,” she says softly.
“You did,” Cal replies immediately. “You kept me safe. You didn’t treat me like I was broken.”
He smiles, small and real. “That mattered.”
—
He can’t stay.
They both know it before the little droid says it aloud for them, before the news crackles in over the comms about increased patrols, before the air starts to feel watched.
On the last night, Ylri presses a datachip into his palm. Coordinates. Frequencies. Names.
“Wherever I am,” she says. “You can come. No questions.”
Cal swallows hard. “You don’t owe me that.”
She snorts. “Kid. You fell off a catwalk on Bracca once and half the crew nearly murdered the Guild over it.”
His eyes shine.
“You’re ours,” Ylri says, fierce and certain. “Prauf knew it. Losing him doesn’t change that.”
Cal nods, once. He leans in and presses his forehead briefly to hers, a gesture so careful it almost hurts to see.
“Thank you,” he says.
When he leaves, he does it like a Jedi now—quiet, purposeful, already half a legend.
Ylri watches him go and smiles to herself.
Jedi terrorist, the Empire can call him whatever it likes.
He’ll always be the crew’s kid.
And he’ll always have somewhere safe to land.